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SOCI 5370: Seminar in Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations: Search Strategies: Finding Articles

Where to Search

Use Sociology Databases to find articles on your topic.

Many of the articles contain full-text, meaning that the actual article is available in the database. 

Databases contain proprietary content from a variety of scholarly journals, conference proceedings, books, dissertations, and more.

Some databases contain content from only one publisher, such as Elsevier or Wiley, while others have content, or index articles, from a variety of publishers.

Also, see the suggested databases listed on this research guide.

Finding Full Text

On the Library Homepage you can search the "title of an article" (enclosed in "quotation marks") in Start Your Research.
Periodical List is the search page to use when you need to know if the Library has print and/or online access to a journal.  If the Library does not have print/online access to a journal you need an article from, request a copy of the article via Interlibrary Loan/ILL.

 Enter "Journal Title" in quotes
 


The example below shows that The Journal of Continuing Higher Education is accessible in print/microform as well as online.  The entry also shows coverage dates to indicate which years are accessible.

► Not every journal is available in both Print/Microform as well as Online ◄

Search Strategies

Search by keywords and small phrases.

Maximize your keyword searches with Boolean searching:

    AND internet AND teenagers all words must appear in the result list
    OR teenagers OR adolescents either word may appear in the results
    NOT internet NOT "social network" must mention the term "internet", but excludes
    items with the phrase "social network    		 
    Use "quotation marks" to search for phrases.

    Consider truncation. The asterisk (*) symbol is used most often

    math* will search for all forms of the root:

    math, mathematics

    mathematical

    mathematician

    mathematicians

    math education

    Try using database Subject or descriptor terms. Those are listed in the database’s thesaurus, or they may be listed near the article abstract. These can be useful for learning the preferred vocabulary of a discipline.